Democracy Briefing: Sneaking in turbocharged Muldoonist powers to the Fast Track Act
There’s something deeply off about the way the Government is trying to re‑wire its controversial Fast Track Approvals Act.
In the middle of all the noise about leadership coups, crime, and coalition dramas, the Cabinet is quietly moving to bolt a new set of powers onto the legislation. And these are powers that would give ministers an even bigger say over which big corporate projects get waved through, and which ones don’t. It is happening in haste, and mostly out of sight. If you were designing a system that invited political favouritism and crony capitalism, you would struggle to do much better than this.
And that is essentially what Environment Commissioner Simon Upton is warning. His submission to the select committee last week reads like a flashing red light. Covering Upton’s submission and criticising this major amendment, journalist Richard Harman has described it as “Bishop channels Muldoon”. That sounds dramatic, but it is actually a fairly restrained description of what is being proposed.
From Fast-Track to Minister-Track
The original Fast Track Approvals Act was already a big shift in how New Zealand decides on major infrastructure, mining and development projects. It centralises decision‑making in the hands of a few ministers, trims back environmental checks, and sidelines local communities and expert agencies.
Now the Government wants to go further. The currently proposed amendment would allow ministers to effectively rewrite parts of the law on the fly so they can list new projects, loosen constraints, and steer decisions to suit political priorities. Instead of a framework where ministers operate within clear, pre‑agreed rules, the rules themselves become malleable.
So, decisions don’t just become faster, they become more arbitrary. That’s the real “efficiency” here. Ministers gain discretion, and discretion without strong safeguards is the breeding ground for vested interests and corruption.
It is not hard to imagine how this looks from the boardrooms of large corporates. Suddenly the key to unlocking a lucrative project is not a transparent planning process but a ministerial sign‑off. If you can get your scheme into the right minister’s ear, or onto the right list, you are halfway there. Lobbying becomes the main game.
Simon Upton’s warning shot
Simon Upton is not exactly a fire‑breathing eco‑warrior. He is a former National minister, a conservative institutionalist, and one of the country’s more thoughtful policy thinkers. When someone like Upton uses phrases such as “constitutional concern” and “erosion of public accountability”, governments normally pause and listen.
In his submission, Upton lays out a simple but devastating critique. He argues that the amendments would:
Concentrate enormous power in the hands of a small number of ministers
Allow them to pick winners and losers amongst private projects
Undermine established checks on environmental harm and long‑term sustainability
Weaken Parliament’s role by shifting key decisions into executive regulation and ad‑hoc ministerial processes
He points out that once ministers have the ability to add or change project listings with minimal scrutiny, the whole regime becomes “inherently vulnerable to political pressure”. That is polite code for: donors, lobbyists and well‑connected companies will work this system hard.
Upton’s broader concern is that the Bill treats environmental limits and long‑term public interests as obstacles to be cleared, rather than as basic guardrails. The idea that a minister can simply brush aside warnings about climate impacts, biodiversity loss, or risk to drinking water, in order to meet an arbitrary deadline or keep a political promise, is exactly what the Resource Management Act was meant to prevent.
If this was a leftwing government trying to do something similar for its pet causes, National and Act would be tearing strips off it.
Bishop as Muldoon’s spiritual heir
Housing and Infrastructure Minister Chris Bishop has become the face of the Fast Track project. He has pitched it as a common‑sense answer to bureaucratic delay, a way to cut through red tape and get the country building again.
The problem is that, in practice, he is asking for powers that look remarkably like a throwback to the Robert Muldoon era. Back then, the Prime Minister personally drove “Think Big” energy projects through the system, brushing aside environmental objections and economic doubts. Cabinet ministers and state corporations mixed politics, planning and big money in ways that took decades to tidy up.
Richard Harman’s description of Bishop “channelling Muldoon” is not just colourful. It captures the mindset: centralising power in the executive, trusting ministers to make big calls on the nation’s future based on what they think is good for growth, and treating critics as procedural obstacles. The Fast Track amendments operate on the assumption that ministers, not expert bodies or communities, should have the final word.
We’ve spent forty years slowly building a more rules‑based system. This is one where planning laws, environmental standards and public processes constrain ministers from simply cutting deals. The new powers would go in the opposite direction. When a project is politically favoured, ministers can step in. When it isn’t, they can sit on their hands. That is not the rule of law; that is the rule of ministers.
Integrity and the lure of political favouritism
From an integrity perspective, the biggest worry is not that every decision will be corrupt. It is that the system will no longer clearly distinguish between appropriate influence and inappropriate influence.
Imagine being a minister under this regime. A large corporate wants its mine or dam or port expansion put on the fast‑track list. It hires lobbyists, sets up “stakeholder briefings”, perhaps helps fund a business‑friendly campaign. The company might be a big donor to one of the governing parties, or it might quietly fund third‑party campaigns that support the coalition. And of course in the current case, it happens to be that the Minister in charge is also National’s re-election campaign chair, with oversight of donations to the party.
None of this is illegal. But all of it creates a subtle sense of obligation and reciprocity.
Now imagine that the same minister is empowered to rubber‑stamp the project through a truncated process, overriding public objections and expert advice. Even if the minister genuinely believes the project is in the national interest, the appearance of conflict of interest is obvious. The public cannot easily tell whether the decision was based on good evidence or on who had the best lobbyist.
That is precisely why mature democracies try to separate the setting of rules from the granting of favours. Parliament writes general laws. Independent agencies apply them. Transparency, rights of appeal, and published reasoning allow citizens to see that similarly‑placed projects are treated alike.
The Fast Track amendments blur that separation. Ministers step into the role of gatekeepers for particular corporate ventures. The risk is not just bad decisions, but a steady corrosion of public trust. Once people think big projects are decided through back‑room deals, cynicism spreads, and genuine long‑term planning becomes even harder.
Conflicts of interest and the corporate wish‑list
The Government is also opening itself up to serious conflict‑of‑interest problems. Several of the big‑ticket projects already being floated (mines on conservation land, large-scale irrigation, new motorways, port expansions) are championed by industries that are deeply entwined with the governing parties. Business groups, agriculture lobbies, and extractive industries were some of National and Act’s most important backers.
Under a normal planning system, that connection is still a problem, but at least ministers are at arm’s length. Independent commissioners or boards make the actual calls. With Fast Track, the Cabinet becomes the approvals committee. When those same ministers show up at party fundraisers, business dinners or post‑politics board appointments, it will not be hard to guess what conversations are taking place.
None of this automatically means money is changing hands in brown envelopes. New Zealand’s corruption problems are usually more subtle than that. They tend to involve access, influence, and preferential treatment for those who already have power. A law that invites corporates to treat ministers as project sponsors, rather than as rule‑setters, simply loads more weight onto an already skewed system.
Once these patterns are established, they are hard to unwind. Future governments inherit the same powers. A future Labour‑Green administration could fast‑track its own favoured projects – perhaps large state‑backed renewables or urban schemes – and use the Bishop precedent to justify doing so. Parties currently cheering this legislation may not enjoy it so much when they’re on the other side of the table.
Haste, secrecy, and sidelining the public
One of the most troubling features of the amendment is the speed and discretion with which it is being pushed through. The original Bill was already criticised for being rushed, with limited time for public submissions and complex clauses that many MPs clearly struggled to get their heads around. Now, after that process has largely finished, ministers are proposing a major late‑stage rewrite that ramps up their own power.
This is not how good law is made. When a government wants to centralise authority, the least it can do is make its case openly and give the public, Parliament and experts enough time to scrutinise it. Instead, the details emerge in dribs and drabs through select committee papers, technical amendments, and background briefings.
Journalists like Richard Harman and those at Newsroom have been left to piece together what is going on. Most citizens will never see the fine print. They will only discover the real meaning of the law when a controversial mine goes ahead, or a major project that affects their local environment is declared “fast track” with little explanation.
The Government presents all this as a war on “bureaucracy”. But the people being sidelined are not only officials. They are ordinary citizens, iwi, environmental groups, and local authorities who currently have some say in what gets built where. Their rights to be heard, to challenge flawed decisions, and to insist on environmental safeguards are being eroded in the name of speed.
A Long‑term policy for short‑term politics
Behind the talk of efficiency lies an old political temptation: use big projects as proof of action. Governments under pressure love to stand in front of freshly‑poured concrete and claim credit. There is a reason Muldoon plastered his face over “Think Big”.
Fast Track fits neatly into that tradition. It allows the coalition to claim that it is “getting things done”: building roads, enabling mines, backing business. But the political need for quick wins is precisely why long‑term checks exist. Environmental damage often emerges slowly. Infrastructure that looks smart in an election cycle can lock the country into costly and inflexible paths for decades.
Simon Upton’s current role is to think about those long‑term consequences. His job is to remind short‑term politicians that they are merely temporary custodians of the country’s natural resources and environmental health. When he raises the alarm about constitutional and environmental risks, it should be a big deal. Instead, the response so far has been largely defensive and dismissive.
There is a real danger that New Zealand repeats past mistakes: locking itself into expensive, environmentally damaging projects that benefit a small group of corporate winners, while the wider public is left with the costs.
A better way to do fast‑track (if we really need it)
There is an honest debate to be had about whether some projects face excessive delay. The Resource Management system is far from perfect; it has been slow, legalistic and sometimes captured by narrow interests on all sides. Many New Zealanders are understandably frustrated with the time it takes to build housing, transport and energy infrastructure.
But if the goal is to streamline good projects, there are safer ways to do it. A genuinely integrity‑minded fast‑track regime would:
Be run at arm’s length from ministers by an independent body with clear criteria
Publish all decisions and reasoning, including any ministerial directions or overrides
Apply consistent environmental and Treaty standards, rather than treating them as optional add‑ons
Include strong conflict‑of‑interest rules for decision‑makers and lobbyists
Build in regular independent reviews so that power does not quietly accumulate in ministers’ offices
The Government has chosen a very different path. It is asking the public to trust that ministers will wield broad, largely unchecked powers in the public interest, while lobbyists and corporate interests flock to their doors. That is not a system designed for trust; it is a system that relies on faith.
Why this matters for democracy
Fast Track might look, at first glance, like just another dry planning law. It isn’t. It is part of a wider pattern in which executive power is being strengthened, scrutiny weakened, and the line between public interest and private gain blurred.
If the Government succeeds in pushing through these amendments, future fights over major projects will not primarily be about evidence or long‑term strategy. They will be about who can get closest to the ministers holding the pen. Citizens who are not part of the corporate or political elite will be pushed further to the margins of decision‑making.
That is why voices like Simon Upton’s are so important right now. And it is why journalists prepared to wade through dense legal changes and paywalled select committee material deserve credit. Without them, this quiet, technical‑sounding power‑grab would slip by almost unnoticed.
In his latest article on this, Richard Harman suggests that some in National might have to stand up to Bishop’s plans. Harman argues that the Select Committee should advise against Bishop’s amendment, which would be controversial in the party, but not entirely unwelcome given increasing questions about Bishop’s integrity: “That would be a brave call for a Select Committee chaired by a first-term backbencher (Catherine Wedde) to go back and tell Bishop that he should withdraw his Bill. But there are already concerns within the National caucus about what some see as his Muldoonist tendencies”.
It seems that Muldoonism didn’t vanish with Muldoon. It simply lies dormant until the next group of politicians convince themselves that they, unlike their predecessors, can be trusted with exceptional powers. The proposed Fast Track amendments suggest that lesson has not been fully learned.
If New Zealand cares about integrity, accountability and equality of voice, this is one of those moments when the fine print really matters.
Dr Bryce Edwards
Director of the Democracy Project
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